Pirate Character Design

I've just created an inspiration board on Pinterest. What inspires me the most is my 3-year old son, though.

http://www.pinterest.com/lcampmany/pirate-inspiration/

This is the process I went through to create and color my character. To be honest, I had to do some fixes and added many layers in Photoshop after creating the shapes in Illustrator... For details, shadows and textures, I downloaded hi-res brushes that some of my favourite Illustrators and Visual Development artists use for their work. I did what it felt right to me but the expert may notice my lack of fundamentals. Lighting and shading is what I struggled the most. This is actually my first Illustration class ever.